Brian Hannan

Viva Maria (1965) ****

Had it been a hit in the U.S., it could have changed the way women were portrayed on screen.

A box office smash could certainly have fired up a sequel (a key plank of the United Artists business model) and perhaps a reboot (Viva Marias! starring their daughters with or without the mamas). Could have led to the notion of Sophia Loren teaming up with Claudia Cardinale or Gina Lollobrigida and rescuing a captured male in a feminist twist on a western like The Professionals (1966). Imagine if it was Faye Dunaway and Jane Fonda carrying out the con caper in The Sting (1973).

Until Viva Maria!, two top female stars only appeared together in a movie as rivals for a male’s attention, or if one was the victim of nasty behavior from the other, or one was heading for an untimely death leaving the other to hog the screen in a tide of emotion.

Although it still remained virtually impossible to have a pair of female stars appearing together unless for weepie or noir purpose, the impact of Viva Maria was considerable. For a start, it invented the buddy movie four years ahead of that subgenre’s official inception in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).

The poster preceded Clint Eastwood in pointing weaponry hardware menacingly at the potential audience, Gatling rather than a .44 Magnum. Speaking of Gatling guns, might have given Sam Peckinpah ideas for employing that weapon in The Wild Bunch (1969).

Neither molls nor victims, these women fell at the first woman’s picture trope. They were not rivals in love. Maria II (Brigitte Bardot) is of a polyamorous disposition and expresses no interest in Flores (George Hamilton) the revolutionary lover of Maria I (Jeanne Moreau). Forget Julie Christie sowing wild oats in Darling (1965) or any other of the other liberated ladies of the decade, Maria II is streets head, acquiring – and discarding – men by the bunch.

Nor is Maria II particularly interested in becoming that other female fixture of the 60s – the rebel – given that she spent most of her childhood as an accessory to her insurgent father’s violent acts, rolling out detonating wire or pressing the plunger in locales as varied as Ireland and Gibralter before watching her father died in an act of sabotage that went wrong.

You would have thought that by this point in her career Brigitte Bardot (Shalako, 1969) could hardly get away with playing the innocent – setting aside her amoral intent – but audiences expecting titillation would have been surprised to see how quaintly she performs an accidental striptease which transforms their circus act, fortuitous really because Maria II has little sense of the rhythm required to be a stage performer.

Maria II resists becoming involved with Maria I’s messianic boyfriend but when he snuffs it she can hardly ignore his deathbed plea. The two Marias team up with the peasants to overthrow El Dictator (Jose Angel Espinosa ‘Ferrisquilla’) but not before they tangle with the Inquisition and the bad guys learn not to leave Gatling guns lying around. Would it be too much to argue that the female empowerment image of the decade is these two lasses spraying the enemy with bullets from the Gatling gun and, with more sense than Sam Peckinpah’s bunch, no intention of dying an heroic death.

It’s not a comedy in the normal sense, there’s no spoofing of revolution for a start, and it’s not so much filled with great one-liners as terrific sight gags. It’s more a drama with laffs. And, as you will be aware, revolution is good material for musicals – witness 1776 and Les Miserables, so don’t be surprised at the end to find our ladies treading the boards in Paris in a musical version of the revolution they have instigated.

Both Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau (Mademoiselle, 1966) throw acting caution to the winds, breaking out of the restraints of their screen personas, and almost as if freed from having to perform the dutiful female role of sacrifice, can turn their attention to embracing friendship and having a whale of a time doing so. George Hamilton (By Love Possessed, 1961) looks lost.

Most of what director Louis Malle (Atlantic City, 1980) attempts comes off though it might take you a little while to get to grips with the tone. Screenplay by Malle and Jean-Claude Carriere (Belle de Jour, 1967).

A blast.

The Count of Monte Cristo (2024) **** – Seen at the Cinema – Twice

Napoleon, shipwreck, false imprisonment, baby buried alive, corruption, audacious jailbreak, the Knights Templar, hidden treasure: enough for a pulsating soap opera for sure but lifted way out of that genre by the driving revenge narrative, and the personal price paid for such unmitigated ruthlessness. I confess I’m not familiar with the Alexandre Dumas classic and I’m not sure I’ve even seen any earlier screen versions, but I did come to this expecting swashbuckling in the manner of the recent The Three Musketeers. Whether it’s the 2023 double bill, or the versions from 2011, 1993 or 1973, those movies were swordplay heavy. So I was somewhat surprised to find this was lean on the old swash and buckle.

In fact, it’s better described as The Godfather of period adventure, three hours long, where the aspiring sea captain, much in the way of the gangster Michael, transforms from idealistic to classy ruthless killer, with the idea in his head than his rampage is justified because, as with the Coppola classic, he is fighting corruption in high places. And it’s a three-act picture, coming perilously close to tragedy, for sure, and thoroughly engrossing.

*There were over 30 previous versions – this one starring Richard Chamberlain.*

Seaman Edmond Danton (Pierre Niney) saves a young woman, Angele (Adele Simphal) from drowning only to discover she is a spy for Napoleon, just entering exile. Back home, this discovery prevents him from marrying his lover Mercedes (Anais Demouster) and with the connivance of ship’s captain Danglars (Patrick Mille), love rival Count de Morcef (Bastien Bouillon) and prosecutor Gerard de Villefort (Lauren Lafitte) he is arrested on his wedding day and sent to the notorious Chateau d’If prison where everyone is in solitary. During his long confinement he befriends Abbe Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino), who turns out to have secreted a horde of treasure.

Using the clever ruse of pretending to be a corpse, Danton escapes, finds the gold, and returns to Paris as the Count of Monte Cristo to take his revenge on the three men. To that end he recruits a younger generation – Andrea (Julian De Saint Jean), bastard son of Villefort, and Turkish lass Haydee (Anamaria Vsrtolomei) whose father was betrayed by Morcef. The vengeance is all very clever stuff, ruses involving false news, stock market manipulation, and infiltration of emotion. Danton is dab hand with disguises, too, best of all his spluttering Englishman. Audience manipulation, too, reaches a high bar. Naturally, we are behind Danton in his quest for vengeance, we want to see the bullies brought to heel, and so we are sucked in to believing that, like The Godfather, any means is acceptable. And it’s only as we come to the end that Danton is brought up short by the realization of how badly he has infected the innocent with his malice.

I’ve not read the book so I’ve no idea how faithful it is to the Dumas. I’m more inclined to suspect previous versions slashed away at the story to concentrate on the incarceration and the swashbuckling. Given critical obsession with length – an odd preoccupation given that most people will happily binge on three or four episodes of a television series at one sitting – it seems that here it’s justified, each section given due space to develop, Danton shifting from elation to despair and then, supposing erroneously that revenge will return him to a rapturous state, takes most of the third act to work out that it won’t and also that, even when opportunity arises, he cannot replicate the original true love, allowing for a realistic ending.

All the acting is top-notch because the characters are so well-drawn in the first place. And the actors age. in the opening section, they all display the brio of youth. Two decades on, that has dissipated and they are more covert creatures, the prosecutor in particular has a suspicious eye. And they all face emotional reprisal, the narrative so well worked that every character has a high point. Some of the set pieces are just terrific – the telling of a ghost story at dinner, the trial.

Directors Alexandre de la Pateliere and Mathieu Delaporte are well established in this milieu, having written the screenplay for both parts of the recent The Three Musketeers. But if that was a dress rehearsal, they have certainly learned a lesson in how to ground a movie, depending more on genuine drama and character development than flashing blade and conspiracy. Some interesting camerawork, too, long tracking shots reversing back or moving in close.

I enjoyed it so much I went out and bought the book – all 1200 pages of it.

Update: it’s on the shortlist to be considered as the French entry for the Best Foreign Picture category at the Oscars.

Thoroughly absorbing.

Maroc 7 (1967) ***

With a string of Swinging Sixties fashion models providing the requisite bevy of beauties, a gang of thieves, a Moroccan heist, superb locations, great cast and a touch of archaeology with secret chambers and a long-lost relic thrown, this splendid espionage frolic proves a welcome return to big screen top billing for Gene Barry after nearly a decade in television in Bat Masterson (1958-1961) and Burke’s Law (1963-1966).

Something of a cat burglar himself, Simon Grant (Barry) infiltrates a gang which uses fashion as a cover and whose ingenious specialty is to steal famous heirlooms and replace them with fake ones in the assumption that on their departure from a foreign country the customs officers will not be able to tell the difference. Louise Henderson (Cyd Charisse) and Raymond Lowe (Leslie Phillips) head up the gang while Claudia (Else Martinelli) may or may not be in on the act.

Her dalliance with Simon suggests an inclination towards the right side of the law justice but the fact that she has been involved with the pair for so long sets up the intriguing notion that she is stringing the American agent along. Initially, she rejects Simon’s advances until told by Louise to comply and pump him for information leading to one of the movie’s best lines (and innuendo that a British audience in particular would adore). Says Simon: “We haven’t done much about pumping but maybe that will come later.” Doubts also surround the intentions of Michelle Craig (Alexandra Stewart). On their trail is Inspector Barrada (Denholm Elliott).

There is mystery aplenty and a fair quotient of punch-ups, romance, shoot-outs and murder while the unearthing of the hidden treasure is more less heist than Indiana Jones. The fashion is the icing on the cake. The Moroccan fashion shoots are more than merely decorative, an excuse to bare the charms of the gorgeous models. Instead, the shoots would not disgrace Vogue or any of the other glossy magazine temples to haute couture, with that Sixties focus on fabulous clothes, genuine location and outlandish hairstyles.

On top of that, several of the stars are either playing against type or out of their comfort zones. Legendary Hollywood dancer Cyd Charisse famed for such classic musicals as The Bandwagon (1953) and Silk Stockings (1957) sets such fluff aside to essay a criminal mastermind, whose cunning often gets the better of Simon. Leslie Phillips (Crooks Anonymous, 1962), better known as a charming Englishman with an eye for the ladies, is as ruthless a photographer as he is a criminal. Director Gerry O’Hara (The Pleasure Girls, 1965) – from a script by David D. Osborn (Some Girls Do, 1969) has managed to get both Phillips and Denholm Elliott to drop their standard methods of delivery, usually embracing a drawl, making their characterizations a good bit fresher than normal. Phillips was clearly intending to make some kind of career change since he was the producer.

Gene Barry makes a perfect entrance as an adventurer-spy, as confident in his seduction techniques without women falling at his feet like James Bond, with a nice line in self-deprecation and more than able to look after himself. Before being side-tracked by television, Barry had shown movie star potential in Thunder Road (1958) and Hong Kong Potential, and now he delivers on that earlier promise. Elsa Martinelli (Hatari!, 1962) is the femme fatale who may or may not wish to play that role, keeping the audience completely on edge as to which side of the law she is likely to come down. Added bonuses are Alexandra Stewart (Only When I Larf, 1968), Angela Douglas (Carry On Screaming!, 1966), Tracy Reed (Hammerhead, 1968), dancer Lionel Blair (A Hard Day’s Night, 1964) and Maggie London.

Good fun with plenty diversion.

The Interns (1962) ***

Patients are a nuisance to be tolerated on the route to wealth in this superior soap opera that sees young doctors wrestling with ambition and ethics. Although also concluding that impending lofty status will snare them an attractive bride, they find women less biddable than expected, romance proving the trickiest of all procedures.

The main cast of four men and one woman are played by a roster of hotly-tipped newcomers, including future Oscars winners and nominees and the elusive Haya Harareet (The Secret Partner, 1961). Director David Swift, accustomed to handling multiple characters in the likes of Pollyanna (1961), keeps the pot boiling and although some storylines lead to obvious conclusions the screenwriters bring sufficient imagination to the various strands.

The story unfolds over the one year the doctors spend in a general hospital, where the patients are liable to be drunk and obstreperous, before taking up residencies elsewhere. As you might expect, the main characters divide into the good and the arrogant. Heading the latter are Alec Considine (Michael Callan) who cheats on girlfriend Mildred (Anne Helm) with older nurse Vicky (Katharine Baird) in order to gain through her connections a residency at a highly prestigious hospital.

Matching him in the cocky stakes is John Paul Otis (Cliff Robertson), charming to old ladies but willing to risk his career to bed movie actress Lisa (Suzy Parker). The good guys are Lew Worship (James MacArthur) who is seduced into the supposed backwaters of obstetrics and Sid Lackland (Nick Adams), an all-round good egg who falls for a patient Loara (Ellen Davalos).

The most interesting of the young doctors, however, is single mother Madolyn Bruckner (Haya Harareet) who takes on surgeon Dominic Riccio (Telly Savalas) at every turn. Riccio spends his time berating his charges and, in particular, has a downer on female doctors. At every encounter, despite his vicious tongue, she refuses to back down.

But it is the patients, in particular Arnold Auer (Peter Brocco) and Loara, who blow a hole in the myth of hospitals. In the best scene in the film, Auer, suffering from a degenerative illness that will turn him into a vegetable, takes over from the doctor in giving his own awful diagnosis. His pleas for clemency from his ordeal, in essence assisted suicide, create an ethical dilemma for the young doctors who did not realize that modern medicine could prolong rather than curtail patient suffering.

Auer’s anguished wife Emma (Angela Clarke) flits in and out of the picture as she buttonholes any doctor willing to listen to a new cure she has discovered. While the more hard-hearted doctors can inure themselves to his agony, a savage turn of events finds them all caught up in a situation that could jeopardize their future careers.

Although Loara has an incurable disease and has more or less given up, Lackland’s effervescent good humor and determination that surgery can resolve all health issues brings her hope and if you were in her condition possibly the last thing you would want would be a cheerleading doctor on your side, but in this instance it brings succor and in the doctor’s case forces him to rethink his priorities.

Probably the last thing the doctors – and the audience – expected was to come up against such stubborn, free-thinking women. While Bruckner appears to fly the flag for female independence, she has solid support from Lisa who spends most of the picture rejecting Otis’s advances on the grounds that even when he becomes rich he will be too poor for her liking. Eventually, Vicky forces Considine to choose. Shy nurse Gloria (Stefanie Powers) shocks Worship by putting global travel ahead of marriage. But she’s not as shocking as the bespectacled inhibited Olga (Carroll Harrison) who loses her inhibitions in style at a wild party.

Theoretically, a film about young doctors having a romp, in reality a thoughtful and thought-provoking picture, tackling issues that would have been taboo at the time and removing the submissive tag that daunted most movie female characters in the movies.

Those who succeeded in later winning Oscar favor were Cliff Robertson, Best Actor for Charly (1968), and Nick Adams and Telly Savalas, both nominated for Best Supporting Actor, the former in Twilight of Honor (1963) and the latter in The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962).

Robertson was the pick of the bunch, a star in his own right graduating from 633 Squadron (1964) and Masquerade (1965) to J.W. Coop (1971) which he also directed. But largely, the stars did not fulfil initial promise. The peak of Michael Callan’s movie career was reprising his role in The New Interns (1964), star in British director Michael Winner’s You Must Be Joking! (1965) and second male lead in Cat Ballou (1965). James MacArthur had a steady movie career before an epic run in television series Hawaii Five-O (1968-1979). Nick Adams switched between film and television before his premature death in 1968. Haya Harareet made only one more film, The Last Charge (1962). In a bit part here, this is the same Brian G. Hutton who went on to greater things as a director, most notably Where Eagles Dare. (1968).

Although primarily in television, the less-heralded stars enjoyed greater ongoing success. Mainly a strong supporting actor, Telly Savalas had only one stab at a starring role (Land Raiders, 1970) before achieving worldwide fame as Kojak (1973-1978). Stefanie Powers was television’s The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966-1967) and later Hart to Hart (1979-1984). Buddy Ebsen (who plays the older Dr Sidney Wohl) went straight into a nine-year run of The Beverley Hillbillies.

Directed with considerable care and awareness of relevant issues by David Swift (Pollyanna, 1961) who co-wrote the screenplay with Water Newman (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) from the novel by Richard Frede. It spawned sequel The New Interns and a TV series. Some reports have The Interns as the biggest of the year for Columbia, but that would only be correct if you were only able to exclude the massive box office for Lawrence of Arabia.

Still a soap, but an interesting one.

The Split (1968) ***

You could not have a more explosive start. In the wake of the seismic slap Sidney Poitier delivered to an arrogant white man in In the Heat of the Night (1967) heist mastermind McClain (Jim Brown) bursts out of the traps by: picking a down-and-dirty knuckle-duster of a fight with hardman Bert (Ernest Borgnine); ramming a limo driven by Harry (Jack Klugman); locking technical wizard Marty (Warren Oates) in an electronic cell; and bracing marksman Dave (Donald Sutherland). It turns out these are all auditions for a $500,000 robbery from the Los Angeles Coliseum during a football match. Nonetheless, the point is made. Despite explanation for the ferocity it scarcely masks the fact that here was a hero unwilling to take any crap from anybody.

The Split follows the classic three acts of such a major crime: recruitment, theft, fall-out. Gladys (Julie Harris) sets up the daring snatch, entrusting a down-on-his-luck McClain – attempting reconciliation with divorced wife Ellie (Diahann Carroll) – with pulling together a gang with particular sets of skills. The clever heist goes smoothly, the cache smuggled out in a gurney into a stolen ambulance, itself hidden in a truck, and spirited away to Ellie’s apartment until the ruckus dies down.

But someone else has a different plan. The stolen money is stolen again. McClain, responsible for its safekeeping, is blamed for its loss, while he suspects all the others. Adding to the complications is a corrupt cop (Gene Hackman). So it’s cat-and-mouse here on in, McClain dodging bullets as he attempts to clear up the mess, find the loot and dodge the cops.

The title refers to the way the way the money is intended to be shared out but it could as easily point to a film of two halves – recruitment/robbery and fall-out. The first section has several stand-out moments – a split-screen credit sequence, Marty’s desperate strip inside the cell to prevent the electronic door closing, an asthma attack mid-robbery, the beat-the-clock element of the heist, Dave’s targeting of tires to create the massive gridlock that facilitates escape. Thereafter, the tension grows tauter, as the thieves fall out with murderous intent.

One of the joys of the picture is watching a bunch of actors on the cusp. Jim Brown (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) was in the throes of achieving a stardom that would soon follow for Hackman (Bonnie and Clyde, 1967), Sutherland (also The Dirty Dozen) and Oates (Return of the Seven, 1966). Brown is tough and cynical in the Bogart mold, a loner with lashings of violence in his locker.

Of the supporting cast, Sutherland’s funny maniac, complete with mordant wit, is the pick and he has the movie’s best line (“The last man I killed for $5,000. For $85,000 I’d kill you seventeen times.”) Hackman reveals an intensity that would be better showcased in The French Connection (1971) and Borgnine, Oscar-winner for Marty (1955), reverts to his tough guy persona. Having said that, you only get glimpses of what they are capable of.

Making the biggest step-up is Scottish director Gordon Flemyng whose last two pictures were Dr Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks’ Invasion Earth A.D. 2150 (1966). He helms the picture with polish and confidence, allowing the young bucks their screen moments while wasting little time in getting to the action and pulling off a mean car chase.

Crime writer Richard Stark (pseudonym of Donald E. Westlake) was careful to sell the rights to his books one-by-one so that no single studio could acquire his iconic thief Parker. That accounted for him being renamed Walker in Point Blank (1967), Edgar in Pillaged (1967), Macklin in The Outfit (1973), Stone in Slayground (1983) and Porter in Payback (1999) before finally appearing in original name in Parker (2013).

Great stuff.

The Trygon Factor (1967) ****

Sublime climax but you need persistence to get through the fog of red herrings. Genre mash-up that flits precariously between whodunit and horror as we slip from a convent of nefarious nuns living in a vast stately home, where half-naked girls pose for photo sessions, and secret messages are smuggled out, to a pre-giallo masked killer with a drowning obsession liable to jump out. Luckily, there’s an equally impressive grand hotel nearby, thankfully minus nuns, but where killers still roam.

I had mistakenly assumed horror because “Trygon” is close to “Tygon,” the British horror outfit taking a more outré approach to the genre than staid old Hammer, and because of the random killings, and a man, Luke (James Culliford), son of the mansion owner Livia Emberday (Cathleen Nesbitt), in the habit of dressing up in weird garb and chopping the heads off flowers with a sword and inclined, in a fit of pique, to smash precious china heirlooms. And because there’s a fair bit of business with a coffin, this being the kind of movie where mourners lean into the casket and kiss the corpse.

If it is, indeed, a corpse. Zombies, anyone? I wouldn’t have been surprised. This is jam-packed with sumptuous misleading incident. Especially, as, for most of the proceedings, it seems like we’re stuck in a detective tale with an inspector who’s clearly never lived a minute in Britain judging from his glowing tan. He’s investigating a missing colleague (Allan Cuthbertson) seen in the opening sequence snooping around the mansion before being passed furtive notes through the gates by a young nun, later rigorously stripped of her habit.

The tan’s probably the giveaway since the immaculately turned-out Supt Cooper-Smith (Stewart Granger) fancies himself as a ladies’ man, first with French receptionist Sophie (Sophie Hardy) who expects a bit of coaxing seduction, and then with Livia’s daughter Trudy (Susan Hampshire), the photographer, who doesn’t, keener on a speedier route into a man’s affections.

By the time the dust begins to settle, and the top cop harbors suspicions about a dockside warehouse owned by swivel-eyed Hubert (Robert Morley) – although Cooper-Smith’s investigation technique revolves around plying young women with brandy – we’re drifting between the notion of some mad cult operating in the convent and Luke as the most likely serial killer given his determination to “play” with young women.

But, in fact, just as we’re being lulled into a sense of false security and the idea that we’ve seen this all before, director Cyril Frankel (On the Fiddle, 1961) springs the first of several audacious twists. The idea that the stately home is a front for a gang of thieves might, on the face of it, appear ludicrous except for the skill with which they carry out the heist and that the criminal mastermind is Livia, assisted by equally cunning daughter.

They have imported – in a coffin – a top French safecracker whose tool of choice is the kind of weapon that Thunderbolt and Lightfoot would have envied, if not a villain of James Bond proportions, and although the armament doesn’t spew out laser beams, it has sufficient firepower to render vulnerable the toughest safe. Naturally, Livia organises the break-in to coincide with nearby building works where the thunder of pneumatic drills will drown out any gun fire.

The thieves turn up outside the appointed bank in what appears an official security van, but from the boxes they carry into the target they produce gas masks and proceed to immobilize anyone inside. They’re after gold bullion because, under the guise of manufacturing large candlestick holders for sale to tourists at the stately home, Livia has set up a gold-smelting operation, pouring liquified gold into the base of the candlestick, trademark Trygon. Having re-disguised the French safecracker as a corpse and placed him in a coffin ready for the surreptitious trip home, ruthless Livia instead dumps him into the Thames to drown.

It’s pure luck that our police lothario happens upon the truth and discovers the smelting basement whereupon – twist number two – the delectable Trudy reveals herself to be the serial killer. She kills for “fun” and relishes the prospect of knocking off an “arrogant” male and one too susceptible to her charms to recognize her femme fatale sensibilities

The giallo-esque killings are highlights, one victim drowned in a baptismal font, another in a bathtub. That female’s kicking and screaming isn’t enough, what with the radio turned up loud, to attract the attention of the nubile Sophie next door luxuriating in a bubble bath. But death by piping hot liquid gold takes some beating. And that’s not the sole reason for the X-certificate since the movie taunts the censor in Blow-Up (1966) – minus the attendant hullabaloo – fashion with a brief glimpse of naked female breast.

The prospective audience might have expected a supernatural outcome given director Frankel’s previous outing The Witches (1966) and had they been alerted to the fact that the source material (uncredited) was written Edgar Wallace might have come prepared for some of the twists.

This is the kind of movie that needs to be viewed backwards because it’s only at the end that you work out what it’s all about and how skilfully the audience has been duped. An object lesson and one that, for example, Zoe Kravitz (Blink Twice, 2024) should have watched to learn how to suck an audience in.

When you consider the movie in reverse, you realize this is really about an exceptionally clever heist and two women who are more than a match for any man. The males here are definitely disposable.

If you wondered why I gave this is a four-star rating rather than the more obvious three stars, it’s because of what’s mostly unsaid, the iceberg of psychology floating beneath the surface, the one that says that British audiences would not tolerate a top-class female criminal gang capable of pulling off a fantastic heist and without compunction killing off any man, including co-workers, who gets in their way. Had it begun from the POV of Lydia and Trudy planning the robbery, and dealt with Cooper-Smith et al as simply hazards of the profession, it might have made a terrific heist picture but then all the fun of the twists and the pulling the wool over audience eyes would be missed.

Susan Hampshire (The Three Lives of Thomasina, 1963) belies her Disney persona with a chilling portrait of an exceptionally smart femme fatale. Stewart Granger (The Last Safari, 1967) looks as if he views the whole boring process of detection as nothing more than the opportunity to try out some chat-up lines.

Cyril Frankel makes no pretence at being a great stylist, but he more than makes up for it by the teasing structure, some of the costumes, the atmosphere and the twists. Derry Quinn (Operation Crossbow, 1965) and Stanley Munro, in his movie debut, devised the screenplay based on a book by Edgar Wallace

Watch – and marvel.

The Last Sunset (1961) ***

Too many hidden secrets turn this into a Peyton Place of a western. When the final unexpected zinger strikes home the movie has nowhere to go and undercuts the climax. Director Robert Aldrich also lets Kirk Duglas off the leash so there’s too much of him festering to put the outcome in any doubt. Strangling a vicious dog with your bare hands is usually a sign of heroism but here it just undermines Douglas’s character.

Wanted murderer O’Malley (Kirk Douglas) has skipped to Mexico away from the long arm of the American law. Nonetheless, lawman Stribling (Rock Hudson) is in pursuit, presumably hoping to kidnap him and drag him back over the Rio Grande into U.S. jurisdiction. The story, in a major narrative flaw, finds another way to head O’Malley north.

Anyways, O’Malley is in Mexico not just to escape, but for a more sentimental reason, he wants to hook up again with first love Belle (Dorothy Malone). The fact that she’s married to limping ex-Confederate soldier Breckenridge (Joseph Cotten) appears to make no difference. And when O’Malley strikes up a deal to help Breckenridge drive his herd of cattle to Crazy Horse, a town over the Rio Grande, he tells the husband of his romantic intent.

This would usually spell trouble except the narrative conveniently disposes of the husband. However, by this point the lawman has also thrown his hat into the romantic ring, having signed up to become trail boss. You can see the logic in Stribling’s decision. If O’Malley’s heading in the right direction then it makes it easier for Stribling to get him over the border.

What doesn’t make any real sense is Breckenridge’s hiring of O’Malley in the first place, or the deal the outlaw negotiates. O’Malley would go along in any case for a meal of beans a day just to keep track of Belle who’s the appointed cook for the ride. Instead, and with no cattle herding skills in evidence, he manages to get Breckenridge to agree to give him one-fifth of the herd as a bonus in addition to the normal pay of a dollar a day. Although the audience has already guessed O’Malley’s romantic purpose, he spells it out to the rancher, “I want your wife” the rider to the deal.

O’Malley takes little notice of Belle’s diffidence. The man who was once an enticing prospect to an inexperienced young girl is now presented in a different light. “You carry your own storm wherever you go,” she tells him. She no longer has a hankering to end up just “a survivor,” not convinced by his plan to settle down with the money from the sale of his share of the herd.

As usual, the trail ride has sufficient incident – lightning storm, stampede, a brush with Native Americans, saloon gunfight, a trio of no-goods hitching a ride, a sighting of St Elmo’s Fire and that old trope quicksand – to keep the story moving without the love triangle and what actually turns out to be a revenge tale.

The story takes some unexpected turns. Stribling is a pretty efficient cowboy, seeped in western lore, knows how to keep a herd in shape. He heads off a marauding tribe by trading some of the herd, in compensation for the innocent man O’Malley instinctively shot dead. Belle needs to kill a man to defend herself. And O’Malley, romantic ambitions thwarted by Stribling, starts wooing Belle’s daughter Missy (Carol Lynley) who, no surprises there, reminds him of Belle at a younger age.

As the secrets come spilling out, it becomes apparent that O’Malley has seduced Stribling’s sister whom the outlaw disses as an easy lay – “your sister was a free drink on the house” – and more importantly that his sister has hung herself after O’Malley killed her lover. Double revenge, I guess, to steal Belle and take O’Malley back to face justice.

You might have wondered how Belle ended up with Breckenridge in the first place and it’s not the soldier-wounded-in-battle routine. It’s because he made an honest woman out of her after – or maybe before – Missy was born out of wedlock. And when Belle sees how serious Missy is about O’Malley she reveals that he’s the father. Leaving O’Malley to do the right thing and not load his pistol when he heads for his shoot-out with Stribling once they have crossed the Rio Grande.

The ending smacks of star redemption. Kirk Douglas can play a mean guy better than most and he’s got no problem being tagged an outlaw but to lose a shoot-out would render him the loser whereas noble sacrifice turns him into some kind of winner. That notion doesn’t take into account that Stribling was guaranteed to win the shoot-out anyway since O’Malley’s weapon of choice is the Derringer, ideal for shooting someone standing right next to you, not a lot of good in a shoot-out where your opponent is twenty feet away.

The narrative twists and turns enough to keep you interested but with every secret revealed the flaws are only too apparent. Rock Hudson (Seconds, 1966) wins the duel of the big stars, a wider range of emotions on show but as tough as his rival and with western skills to boot. We’ve seen this brooding Kirk Douglas (The Arrangement, 1969) too many times before. Dorothy Malone (who had partnered Hudson in Douglas Sirk number The Tarnished Angels, 1957) is good as the woman who knows her own mind. Joseph Cotten (The Oscar, 1966) probably signed up not for the chance to show off his limp but for the scene in the saloon where his myth of Civil War heroism is cruelly exposed. Carol Lynley (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) convincingly transforms from dutiful daughter with a Disney-esque affinity with animals to woman.

Robert Aldrich (The Flight of the Phoenix, 1965) looks hamstrung by the Dalton Trumbo (The Fixer, 1968) script based on the novel Sundown at Crazy Horse by Howard Rigsby.

Too convoluted to fly.

Mademoiselle (1966) ****

Arthouse noir? Cross between an Ingmar Bergman movie, except that the protagonist acts on her repression, and a Claude Chabrol with a character harboring festering desire. Certainly a bold choice for star Jeanne Moreau, excepting Brigitte Bardot France’s biggest female star, to play someone so malignant with scarcely a redeeming feature. Bold, too, in the setting, not the picturesque French village peppered with bright boulangeries and patisseries and with restaurant gatherings knocking back the wine. This is the reality of country life, ruled by religion and officialdom, little sign of ooh-la-la, and distinctly xenophobic – the minute anything goes wrong, blame the foreigner, in this case an itinerant Italian woodcutter.

It’s a distinctly arthouse notion to let the audience know straight off who the villain is while the villagers themselves are left in the dark about who caused two recent fires, their suspicions landing on Manou (Ettori Manni), the forester who arrives once a year so not quite an unknown entity, and too keen on seducing the local women.

We don’t know who the arsonist is, yet, either, but we might get a good idea from the opening sequence where some annual religious pageant, involving blessing fish caught in the river, is disrupted after a woman in high heels and black lace gloves opens a dyke, allowing a torrent of water to flood a farmyard, nearly drowning the animals, only the priest and a few boys left to continue the parade once the adults have raced back to the farm to save the livestock.

The woman is careful to wipe her high heels clear of grass as she places them in a wardrobe on a high shelf that contains other high-heeled shoes. We soon learn she is not just the schoolteacher but also volunteers her typing skills to the police, therefore keeping fully abreast of any investigation, and that she is held in such high esteem in the village that she goes by the name of Mademoiselle (Jeanne Moreau). While she defends Manou against accusations thrown around by the police, she victimises Manou’s son Bruno (Keith Skinner), ridiculing his clothing, making him stand in the corner or against a tree in the playground.

Turns out she’s the fire-raiser and in a small farming village there’s no shortage of houses with adjacent barns stacked full of straw that it only takes a match and a spill of flaming paper to set aflame. Foreigner Manou doesn’t act like an outsider, but dives in to help, at one point needing to leap to safety himself from a burning building. He doesn’t give his son much leeway either, ridiculing him and belting him across the face.

Only the camera catches Mademoiselle’s brooding intensity, the villagers intent on seeing only the upstanding part of her nature, judging her by the job that in an impoverished ill-educated area elevates her to a position of some standing in local society. Nobody dares come a-wooing. Maybe there’s a local squire somewhere around who might fit the bill. And certainly, she won’t lower herself like certain of the younger village females to make the first move.

As the fires grow more common, greater suspicion falls on Manou whom she secretly desires. Contrary to expectation, given the real power she wields in the classroom, and the secret power she wields over the community, her sexual hankerings run in the opposite direction. She wants to be debased, kissing the shoes of Manou when at last she makes her feelings known, howling like a dog, submitting to his domination which includes being spat upon and her clothes torn. You get the impression this might just be her playing out a fantasy except when she returns to the village with her clothes ripped and the women presume she has been raped she points the finger at Manou.

There’s no climax. We don’t see Manou being chased by a baying mob or being arrested as the film ends with her being driven away in a taxi, presumably to move onto the next village where she can continue her life of crime.

So, very much a character study. It’s hard to know when it’s set, but then raw village life hardly changes from one century to the next. Director Tony Richardson (The Loved One, 1965) makes no attempt to evoke sympathy for her. A few decades on when audiences took a liking to serial killers played by terrific actors (Silence of the Lambs, 1991, for example), moviegoers would have been more rapt by her exploits, almost willing her on, but this decade followed a different morality, filmgoers expecting villains of either gender to be punished.

Those sullen sulky features that Moreau previously used as part of her undeniable sexuality now seem turned-in, as defining of incipient evil as deformity was back in the early days of Hollywood.

Sensational performance by Jeanne Moreau (Viva Maria!, 1965) and also by Ettore Manni (The Battle of the Villa Florita, 1965) who proves far more sadistic than your run-of-the-mill seducer with attitudes to women that wouldn’t be out of place in the later giallo genre.

You might feel short-changed that there’s no resolution and that, in a sense, just like Bitter Harvest (1963), the director has skipped the third act and that there’s no real detection of her crimes, no cat-and-mouse between sleuth and villain. But it’s all the better for leaving out those elements. Written by Jean Genet (The Balcony, 1963).

Brooding and pitiless.

Salt and Pepper (1968) ***

Dry run for the director Richard Donner’s later Lethal Weapon? A cautionary tale about what might have happened to the revered Rat Pack series had it spluttered on into the vestiges of the “groovy” Sixties? An attempt to emulate the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby joker-crooner concoction? Or Morecambe and Wise, two idiots on the loose? Spy movie spoof? Stuffy Brits in the firing line?

All of the above. If you are comfortable with the sexist agenda that was almost de rigeur for the times, don’t mind the movie’s lurching tone, or the scattergun gag approach, the glib approach to violent death, and don’t cringe at the running racist jokes (making fun of racism, you understand) you might well find enough to like.

Especially as this was something or an audition. A way to check whether, in Hollywood marquee terms, stars Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford could cut it. For such a renowned celebrity, this was one of only two films where Sammy Davis Jr. was top-billed. And for Peter Lawford, an eternal supporting actor, this was the highest billing he ever achieved outside of the Italian-made The Fourth Wall (1969).

Salt (Sammy Davis Jr.) and Pepper (Peter Lawford) – that’s your first joke, right there, the names, work it out – are under investigation by the London cops for their Soho night club, which doubles as a gambling joint where the croupiers are not only, unusually, female (strike one for feminism) but topless (strike out for feminism). Both consider themselves lotharios and have a running bet on who will be the more successful (so that’s all right then).

But they’re not that bright when it comes to women (so one in the eye for those James Bond types), as neither could spot a femme fatale is she had those words branded on her forehead (the forehead the last female feature they’re interested in), and the prospect of an inert female lying on the office floor is so inviting to them that it doesn’t occur to them they’re trying to chat up a corpse.

Anyways, the dead woman Mai Ling (Jeanne Roland) is a spy and soon our boys are caught up in an espionage tale that dithers between hard-nosed Soho thugs with requisite scars (and a twitch), posh villain with piratical eye-patch, Downing St and duff British officialdom, real and fake Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries, public schools (and a gag about “fags”) and car chases in a Mini-Moke stacked with standard 007 extras like machine guns and oil-spraying devices.

So it’s one wildly imaginative situation after another, interrupted by stage turns by Sammy Davis Jr. (presumably to remind people this was a Rat Pack rip-off), with the cream of the British character acting fraternity being permitted to go way outside the stiff-upper-lip British box.

Fits neatly into the spy spoof, or the Eurospy spoof (which tended to be overloaded one way or another). Shame about the wayward direction and outlandish script because Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford do make a fine screen comedy pair, matching each other in ineptitude, and with Davis coming top of the Swinging Sixties Fashion Faux Pas Top Ten, with the kind of outfits that only attention-seeking nutjobs or villains would consider wearing.

Plenty of fun watching the supporting cast play around with their screen personas. John Le Mesurier (Midas Run, 1969), Michael Bates (Hammerhead, 1968), Robertson Hare (All Gas and Gaiters series, 1966-1971), Graham Stark (The Plank, 1967) and Ernest Clark (Arabesque, 1966) are getting paid to have fun. Ilona Rodgers (Snow Treasure, 1968) makes her movie debut.

You kind of get the idea that Michael Pertwee’s screenplay fell into the wrong hands. That it was intended as a vehicle for Morecambe and Wise (Pertwee wrote The Magnificent Two, 1967) and somehow ended up with American stars.

If your familiarity with the 1960s espionage genre runs only to James Bond, Matt Helm, Harry Palmer and that big-budget ilk and your idea of a spy spoof is limited to Casino Royale (1967), this will fill you in on the breadth of inanity tolerated.

Successful enough to generate a sequel, One More Time (1970).

The Reckoning (1969) ****

Fans of Succession will love the boardroom battles and fans of Get Carter the gritty violence. Michael Marler (Nicol Williamson) is a thug whichever way you cut it. He’s a business hard-ass, at his nicest he’s obnoxious, at this worst brutal. He drives like a demon. Even in love, he’s fueled by hate, sex with wife Rosemary (Ann Bell) infernal. And all of this made acceptable, according to the left-wing tenets that underwrite the film, because he is a working-class man battling upper-class hypocrisy, never mind that his upper-class wife was hardly foisted upon him, nor that he was forced to live in luxury.

Unexpectedly, the film also explores other themes which have contemporary significance. Computers play a pivotal role and so does honor killing. The picture’s original title – A Matter of Honor – was ironic given that in the upper-class worlds in which he moved, courtesy of his job and marriage, he is considered to have little in the way of chivalry. But in the working-class world he has escaped he must avenge his father’s death in this manner.

The sudden death of his father sends him back to Liverpool where he discovers the old man was killed in a pub brawl. But the local doctor and police, disinterested in complicating what must be a regular occurrence, view his death as accidental. So Marler takes it upon himself to uncover the culprits and wreak revenge, any kind of revenge on any kind of culprit, regardless of the fact that from the outset it is clear they will hardly be gangsters. While contemplating violence, he strikes up a sexual relationship with the married Joyce (Rachel Roberts).

The story jumps between the back-stabbing corporate world to a scarcely less violent working class environment. The combination of charm and brute energy holds a certain appeal for Rosemary (Ann Bell) and helps keep him in the good books of his boss. He is otherwise a bully, targeting the weak spots of anyone who stands in his way on his climb to the top, and while heading up the sales division of a company in trouble blaming everyone else for his own failings. And while scorning his wife’s upper-class friends is quite happy to enjoy the benefits of her lifestyle, the flashy car might be the result of his endeavors but not the huge posh house. Marler stitches up another associate with the assistance of another lover, secretary Hilda (Zena Walker), and his long-suffering wife finally takes umbrage at his venomous manner.

Marler hides his hypocrisy behind the façade of a left-wing class-struggle. John McGrath’s screenplay clearly intends Marler’s working-class background to provide him with a get-out-of-jail-free card as well as to launch an attack on an upper classes seen as namby-pamby except when it comes to putting the poor in their place. The anti-class polemic has somewhat eroded over time but in its place can be found an accurate portrayal of social history. For ordinary people, alcohol, the drug du jour, plays a massive part. The endless terraces, houses without a single car parked outside, the vast pub which hosts wrestling matches and is a tinder spark away from erupting in a brawl, a culture where the first graspings at sex are likely to take place up a close or in a car, are in stark contrast to the high-life Marler enjoys in London.

He has no desire to go back home, hasn’t visited in five years, escaping there deemed a sign of success, and mostly returns metaphorically to draw on memories with which to scourge the upper-class and excuse his own behaviour.

Nicol Williamson (Inadmissable Evidence, 1968) delivers a tour de force, his screen presence never so vibrant, exhibiting the same raw appeal as Caine in Get Carter. At this point in is career, with a critically-acclaimed Hamlet on stage, he was perceived as the natural successor to Laurence Olivier and Columbia held up the release of The Reckoning to allow the Tony Richardson film of the stage production, in which he starred, to pick up critical momentum. Oddly enough Rachel Roberts had not capitalized on her Oscar-nominated role in This Sporting Life (1963) and this was only her second movie in seven years. Initially coming across as brassy, she soon softens into a surprisingly wistful character. Both Ann Bell and Zena Walker bring greater dimension to their characters rather than as adoring doormats. You can catch Paul Rogers (Three Into Two Won’t Go, 1969) and Tom Kempinski in supporting roles.

Director Jack Gold, who had worked with both Williamson and McGrath on his movie debut The Bofors Gun (based on the writer’s play), does a great job of capturing a particular period of British social history as well as Williamson stomping around in his pomp. Written by john McGrath (The Bofors Gun, 1967) and, in his debut, Patrick Hall.

Terrific performance stands up well.